A devoted Warp (We Are Reasonable People) soldier since 2000, Clark is an interesting character on the electronic music scene. It’s been some years now, also six albums, to clearly see Clark surfing through different aspects of the contemporary electronic sound and manipulating it with such confidence, that, without any doubts, leads to a vehement and solid idea about his music.
All this until I listened to his latest album, ”Iradelphic”, released on Warp in 2012. My man Chris passed it over one day, enthusiastically claiming it to be ”such an amazing album”; or something similar. Nevertheless, this intrigued me even more.
It is a common process for a good part of the active listeners all over the world, that the personal perception of music usually beats the general belief of what is supposed to be valuable. But this process can be also reversed. For instance, if I’m in a certain mood, music will be perceived different and the perception will mainly be influenced by the mood itself. Music doesn’t act for itself, if there is nobody out there. It doesn’t exist if there is no one to hear it. This is why it happens often to love an album now, and to hate it three months later; or one year later.
As for this album, both old Clark listeners and voyeurs from a different galaxy will love it. It flows like an elegant poetry, romantic, energetic, with passion. The quixotic guitars from the opening track ”Henderson Wrench” anticipate an interesting journey. And the ambiento-drum-and-bass-ish melancholia called ”Com Touch” lives up to expectation. ”Toot Moves” paves the way for a futuristic electronica universe abounding in synthesizers, while ”Open” sees the nice collaboration with singer Martina Topley Bird (known for her old collaboration with Tricky and Massive Attack), for a lush journey through downtempo grooves. She sings also in the next track, ”Secret”, (described as trip-hop - a genre and word that lost its sense in the past five years) and the second part from the trilogy The Pining. ”Black Stone” is a dreamy and melancholic piano song, which came out with a nice video, directed by The Vikings - you can see it below.
This album is very cinematic. Each song opens an amazing and huge universe of sounds and fascinating music. On a good sound system, you might have a blast while listening to it. If not, well…this was only a recommendation, don’t kill the messenger. Oh, I was listening to one of his mixes, on BBC, where he played ”Negative Creep” from Nirvana, but with a personal touch on the beats, and I was wondering, his childhood hero might have been Kurt Cobain?
Tracklist:
1. Henderson Wrench2. Com Touch
3. Tooth Moves
4. Skyward Bruise/Descent
5. Open
6. Secret
7. Ghosted
8. Black Stone
9. The Pining Pt1
10. The Pining Pt2
11. The Pining Pt3
12. Broken Kite Footage